Monday, June 29, 2015

Free Code Camp Review

I have always promised honesty and transparency with this blog. Last time I gave a review about Free Code Camp, I wasn't super supportive. I talked about how the back 2/3 or the course material were basically unusable and very frustrating.
I am happy to tell you that I have been back to Free Code Camp this past week and looked at their new material and played around with it, and can honestly say it is way better! If you want to become a Javascript developer and don't want, or can't pay $17,780 to go through Hack Reactor, then I think Free Code Camp is the best option to become a front end Javascript developer.

My biggest issues with Free Code Camp were towards the end of the map, I didn't like their Node courses and instead got a free trial to Team Treehouse and took all of the Node courses that Treehouse had. I still want to encourage you to always think outside the box and customize the learning to code process to whatever fits your own individual learning style and needs.

I think the best thing about Free Code Camp that I am seeing is the fact that they are constantly trying to improve and make the course material better, which takes time. In my book I mention that Free Code Camp has the best algorithm challenges for beginners that I have ever used and highly recommend using the Bonfire challenges, even if you don't want to take the rest of the Free Code Camp course.

For someone on the fence about taking the course I would keep in mind, that if you are just starting the course now, by the time you get to the back of the course material, it will have improved and gotten better and better. I remember taking One Month Rails when it was first offered on Skillshare years ago - it sucked! But, over time it improved and got better to the point where I now recommend it to everyone :-)

Here's the deal, as long as you are 100% sure that you want to be a Javascript developer and can put in the required time of 1,600 hours, then I highly recommend Free Code Camp. You need to be committed and driven to complete the course, the good news is they have an online chat room where you can ask for help and get unstuck.

All in all Free Code Camp has improved, I see them really trying to make things better and feel that they are serious about making you well rounded as a developer and want people to come out of the program able to land a job.